This project was a piece of wall art for a whale-themed nursery in the family. This was another one where I was able to use AI to help come up with a design based on an idea of what I wanted to build. AI image generation has really come a long way. It still takes a lot of manual effort to get the final SVG right for a CNC, but it’s very helpful for design. I cut all the pieces out on the Shaper Origin and then glued each whale together.

The big whales are walnut and cherry with a maple belly and the small one is white oak. All have inset eyes cut out of wenge. I wanted the background to look like horizontal wood planks so I used a point-cutting 1/8 roundover bit to carve straight lines in a piece of MDF that gave that effect, and painted it white. Finally I built a frame out of white oak and finished everything in Rubio Monocoat Pure.